GUEST BIO

Huldah Buntain: Fifty Years
in Calcutta

By
The 700 Club

In 1954, with a 1-year-old daughter, Mark and Huldah found themselves on
a ship to Calcutta, the beginning of a voyage that would take them across
the Atlantic for three months on two ships. Their first approach to their
new home was up the narrow and treacherous Hooghly River.

“It was like entering the mouth of a dragon,” Huldah says. “The
murky water resembled sewage flowing down a wide gutter, only this current
contained dead dogs and cows and even the skeletal remains of a human body."

Huldah, widowed since 1989, still lives in the same apartment and runs the
ministry she and her husband began 50 years ago. From its humble beginnings,
the Calcutta Ministry has grown to include more than 800 churches, an entire
educational system, several Bible colleges, a hospital, a nurse’s training
center soon to become a college, and a teacher’s college. Huldah oversees
and visits them all. She spends roughly three to four months a year in her
Calcutta apartment. The rest of her time is spent traveling throughout India
and the world.

Huldah is responsible for ministry in 11 Indian states, including 230 million
people. Thirty thousand children from these regions are in Mission of Mercy
schools.

Calcutta Changes

Computers have changed the face of India. Huldah says that if you have a
problem with your computer and you call a tech support line, you are most
probably speaking to someone in India for help. And unlike the early days
when she moved there, you can now buy electronic equipment and modern appliances.
You don’t have to ship them from America.

But poverty still crushes in on Calcutta. For one reason, there are 18 million
residents living in a nine mile by four mile area. And between the hours of
10 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the week, the population swells to 25 million. Some
of Huldah’s own employees see their children only on weekends because
they travel in from such a long distance. They leave home before their children
are up and return after the kids are in bed so that they can earn a wage in
the city.

Hope for the Future

At 79, will Huldah Buntain retire? “NO!” she says emphatically.
The satisfaction of changed lives is far too great. She recently met a young
doctor and his nurse/wife in Toronto who were “our children.”
He was a boy from an extremely poor region who had come to a Mission of Mercy
school and later married a nurse trained in Huldah’s nursing training
center.

Huldah’s ministry is literally helping blind eyes see. Another of her
recent success stories involves the 100 blind students taught at one of her
schools. After being observed by a doctor, five blind children in the Mission
of Mercy Hospital were selected to receive a unique eye surgery allowing them
to see and read. Another 20 students are being screened to determine their
possibilities for this surgery.

Huldah will release a 50th anniversary book at the end of this year outlining
all the miracles God has accomplished in India through His servants Mark and
Huldah.

Greatest Satisfaction

For Huldah, the investment in thousands of lives is a thrill. Of the 1,500
people on Mission of Mercy’s staff, Huldah is excited to point out that
two-thirds of them came through Mission of Mercy’s programs as children.
Seeing another generation come along keeps her excited and moving forward.

Huldah Buntain is truly one of those people who, when the end has come, will
have a whole host of witnesses for whom she has been the vehicle by which
they came to Christ.